RIP RPI, NET is here



  • LOL

    http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/24445390/ncaa-announces-new-ranking-system-rpi

    R.I.P. RPI.

    The NCAA announced Wednesday it has developed the NCAA Evaluation Tool, known as NET, to replace the RPI as the primary sorting tool for teams under consideration for the NCAA tournament.

    The change is effective immediately and NET will be used instead of RPI for the 2018-19 season.

    NET will take into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, offensive and defensive efficiency and the quality of wins and losses.

    “What has been developed is a contemporary method of looking at teams analytically, using results-based and predictive metrics that will assist the Men’s Basketball Committee as it reviews games throughout the season,” Dan Gavitt, senior vice president of basketball for the NCAA, said in a news release. “While no perfect rankings exist, using the results of past tournaments will help ensure that the rankings are built on an objective source of truth.”

    The RPI has been used since 1981 to help select and seed teams in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.

    NET rankings will be publicly available beginning in late November or early December, and updated daily through Selection Sunday, and then again after the NCAA tournament.

    According to the NCAA, NET was developed with input from the Division I men’s basketball committee, the National Association of Basketball Coaches, basketball analytics experts and Google Cloud Professional Services. The NCAA tested the model to predict the outcome of games.

    The system won’t give more weight to games late in the season, instead omitting game date and order from the data. It also caps the winning margin at 10 points to discourage teams from running up the score.

    The quadrant system used on last season’s NCAA tournament team sheets is still in place, with NET replacing RPI as the sorting tool. Team sheets will also still include other metrics, including ESPN’s RPI and Strength of Record, as well as those from Kevin Pauga, Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin.



  • The only way this is superior is if it rewards wins more than “quality losses”.

    A middle or low tier Power Conference team should not be rewarded simply because they have lost to the top teams in their conference. Teams should have to get some quality wins. You shouldn’t be able to play a middling non conference schedule, then finish below .500 in conference and still qualify for the NCAA tournament.

    I would still like to see the committee require a .500 or better conference record to qualify for the NCAA tournament, but money probably rules that out.



  • Well, gee whiz, if it has “evaluation” in its name, it must be objective.



  • @justanotherfan

    You mean…no participation trophies? 😄 I see a run on Xanax coming up among members of a certain generation (that will remain nameless lest I want to incur the wrath of some posters).



  • NCAA is really just going for it this year. After, 65 years of being pretty crotchety, it’s almost unbelievable too see these sweeping changes come in all at once.



  • @JayHawkFanToo are those members so dumb too that they can’t read?



  • @Crimsonorblue22 Why should they be any different?



  • @JayHawkFanToo

    I say that more because I would rather see the first and second place teams from a mid major make the tournament as bubble teams than seeing the sixth or seventh place team from a P5 league make the tournament.

    Also, even though millenials get blamed for participation trophy, the true architects were not millenials - it was their parents. We were the kids that got participation trophies, but not of our own doing - we got them because our parents wanted to have something to brag about to their friends, and put up on the wall to point to when the grandparents came to visit.

    Millenials couldn’t invent participation trophies - six year olds aren’t in charge of that sort of thing. Their parents did.



  • @BeddieKU23

    This equals the light at the end of the tunnel being an EST freight train.

    “…using the results of past tournaments will help ensure that the rankings are built on an objective source of truth.”

    The results of prior tournaments appear the result of seeding and whistle bias.

    Thus this insipid approach institutes the prior season’s seeding and whistle bias.

    Dan Gavitt needs to go.

    No EST guy should be allowed within 100 miles of seeding influence.



  • Call NET the NCAA E.S.T. TOOL.

    They must think we are all tools.



  • I hate the word millennials



  • @justanotherfan Agree completely about the mid-level over the 6,7,8 place in power 5. Also why not finish .500 or better in conference. These are not teams that are going to win the tourney anyway.



  • @jaybate-1.0 Speaking of freight trains…



  • @justanotherfan

    I did not mentioned the term Millennial. right?

    …buit, since you brought it up and FWIW…

    "A 2018 report from Pew Research Center defines Millennials as born from 1981 to 1996, choosing these dates for “key political, economic and social factors”, including September 11th terrorist attacks. This range makes Millennials 5 to 20 years old at the time of the attacks so "old enough to comprehend the historical significance."

    Here is a good write up on the Millennial generation.

    Now, not everybody that was born in this period of time fits the Millennial stereotype. My two kids are part of that generation but they were raised in way that neither fits the Millennial image. For example, my daughter decided a day before starting college that she would not go and spent the next few years working minimum wage jobs until she realized that it was the wrong way to go through life. She went back to college as a non-traditional student getting grants, scholarships and loans to pay for school and graduated with honors with a teaching degree and she taught high risk/special education kids in the inner city at a school where kids are so troubled that even foster car will not take them and lived on a dorm next to the school…not exactly the image of a Millennial. While neither fit the image, they both acknowledge that their generation as a group is one entitled, me-first group. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and went to college in the 70s and my generation was called the hippy and pot head generation and, while I personally never even took a toke of pot, there is no question that most of the people of my generation did; it would be stupid to say otherwise.

    Here is a neutral poll that indicates that Millennials are entitled and even Millennials agree.

    Again, calling a group Millenials is not an insult to anyone in particular and by no means indicates that everybody in that generation fits the mold. My kids readily agree they are Millennials but they add that the do not fit the expected Millennial mold.

    Posters can take my comments in any way that pleases them. either as an insult or just a general statement on our society at large as it was always meant to be.



  • @JayHawkFanToo I figured your daughter was perfect, and the fact she lives on a dorm is a great testament to your teachings of bringing her up in the great outdoors?



  • Crimsonorblue22 said:

    I hate the word millenials

    So, for you, this is definitely a Millennial Bug.

    Remember when the world as we knew it was going to end because computers allegedly would fail to recognize the date? Whew, another catastrophe averted. Now, we DO have to watch out for Extinction-Level Events like comets, plague, and losing to KState…



  • Come on guys, there is a politics thread so we (I) don’t have to read this junk.



  • Crimsonorblue22 said:

    @JayHawkFanToo I figured your daughter was perfect, and the fact she lives on a dorm is a great testament to your teachings of bringing her up in the great outdoors?

    No, my daughter did not live in a dorm, the students lived in a dorm that was part of the school; they lived there because no one would take them in foster care. She went home at the end of the day to take care of her own kids. She is by no mean perfect and I am not sure what the outdoors have to do with it…unless you are implying we were homeless?

    I am out.



  • @JayHawkFanToo I guess you need to reread your post to get what I was kidding about, over and out.



  • @JayHawkFanToo Let me help–she was making a good natured joke. Think “typo” and read her post carefully. Way too much anger on the Board!



  • mayjay said:

    @JayHawkFanToo Let me help–she was making a good natured joke. Think “typo” and read her post carefully. Way too much anger on the Board!

    ——————

    Brother you can count me out of your take that there is “Way too much anger on the Board!”

    I am feeling blissful.

    Generally, I find most posters here happily entertained, upbeat, and warm and compassionate—much more so than paid protesters, apparently controlled movements like ATIFA, talking heads on MSM, shills/embeds, and so on.

    We really appear anomalously happy and content and warmly compassionate here at our KU Basketball-centric web site administrated by the esteemed @approxinfinity .

    Rock Chalk to all we happy, loving, compassionate Jayhawk basketball fans and board rats at KUBuckets.com awaiting yet another wonderful KU basketball season.



  • Since the NCAA tournament involves student athletes, I wish some component of the evaluation included academics. Perhaps, each school’s graduation rate for all of its athletes; something that rewards schools for educating these students and not just acting as a minor league system for the professional leagues. Besides Ws, I get a thrill seeing our athletes get their degrees and be better prepared for the years after their sports career ends.



  • @stoptheflop

    Fabulous point about including academics!!

    PHOF



  • At taikwando my kids shake hands with their sparring partner and say something they like about each other before they fight. I like that.

    “Hi my name is Mike, I like the shape of your head”

    Anyway come on guys. @Crimsonorblue22 I know @JayHawkFanToo can push your buttons but you know what I love about @JayHawkFanToo ? He’s one of the most even tempered people on here. When I agree with him or when I don’t, I appreciate how he deflects escalation from exasperated people and stays even keel. Thanks for that @JayHawkFanToo . @Crimsonorblue22 I appreciate your passion and compassion and the sense of connectedness you feel and bring to the board @mayjay I appreciate your judicial knowledge, stories and turns of phrase.

    Everyone here is solid. I agree with @dylans in that if you guys identify something is moving toward political move it over to a thread about politics. If you guys are getting too personal remember the one rule : don’t be a jerk!

    We’re all good here!



  • So…what about this new rating system…it has to be better than RPI, right?



  • @KUSTEVE

    Yes, a step in the right direction and moving in the direction and considering factors the better computer ratings like Sagarin, Pomeroy and Massey moved years ago. The question is how those factors will be factored? Some of the ratings I mentioned use different factors in different ways, some use reported player status, some like Sagarin improve and become steadier the season moves along, Pomeroy introduced a luck factor and so on so. The end result appears to be similar, i.e. roughly same top 25 teams but the individual teams can be many position apart and be quite different. Sagarin gives you a clean look at the rankings using 3 methods, If you subscribe to a Pomeroy you can get a ton of supporting statistics and Massey I think is closer to the human rankings. Unless there is a built-in bias in the algorithms, the computer rankings tend to be more impartial and consistent.

    The NCAA met with several of the computer rankings developers and I imagine will take bits and pieces of each system and try to create a consensus ranking. Like I said a good first step that will no doubt have some initial growing pains and obviously detractors.



  • justanotherfan said:

    I would rather see the first and second place teams from a mid major make the tournament as bubble teams than seeing the sixth or seventh place team from a P5 league make the tournament.

    Trae Young would like to have a word with you …



  • @approxinfinity “Hi my name is Mike, I like the shape of your head”

    and they say silently, “…and now watch as I reshape it!”



  • @tis4tim good one! Gonna miss seeing his name running across the screen every damn ESPN game. Poor Lon!



  • @Crimsonorblue22 You certainly are an optimist! What makes you think we won’t get Trae’s minute-by-minute NBA career on the ESPN crawl?



  • http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/insider/story/_/id/26229238/how-ncaa-tournament-look-committee-abandoned-net

    For some reason I can still read ESPN+ articles If you can’t read it; SOR would be better, but NET isn’t too bad. KU would be a 3 seed by SOR, Gonzaga the last 2. Michigan a 1 seed and a team I think KU wants no part of.



  • @dylans I just don’t like the idea of relying upon a single metric to determine the field. I like the human element involved for better or worse. I don’t think using the SoR metric to compare close teams are bad to determine seeding and last teams in if there’s debate, but I don’t want to use a single metric to determine the field.

    What would end up happening is that major conference teams would schedule mostly against major conference teams and hurt mid majors and low majors. Loyola doesn’t happen last year with an SoR format, Wofford likely doesn’t happen this year because KU wouldn’t schedule a team like Wofford.



  • I still think you should have to be at least .500 in your conference to qualify for the tournament. Like I have said on here before, teams would be playing must win games in February if they knew one or two more losses would knock them out of at large consideration.

    After all, if you are 7-11 in conference, why should you get an at large bid?



  • @BeddieKU23 I think you should change the name of this post to your first sentence: R.I.P. RPI.

    That’s catchy.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    Ask and you shall receive



  • Kansas is still good at playing the RPI game

    F5D36D1C-E07A-43B4-B8DB-AE65C878C679.jpeg

    as of 2-10-2020



  • NET rankings aren’t as friendly

    310B8DB3-4972-42E4-B637-C2D5A52DB24D.jpeg

    As of Feb 5 2020

    With KU sitting at #2 in the first bracket reveal and WVU on the two line, I’d say the committee doesn’t value NET above RPI yet.


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